Scientists shed new light on ancient 'computer' that helped the Greeks plot the movement of the planets and inspired latest Indiana Jones movie

It is a mysterious and ancient artifact that has proved so intriguing it has sparked wild claims of alien involvement and even inspired the plot of Indiana Jones.

Now scientists who specialise in studying tiny ripples in space time have shed new light on the 2200-year-old Antikythera mechanism.

Discovered in 1901 by divers exploring a sunken shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera, the shoebox-sized device had broken into fragments and eroded.

Decades of subsequent research and analysis have established that the mechanism dates from the second century BCE and functioned as a kind of hand-operated mechanical computer.

Consisting of up to 40 bronze cogs and gears, it allowed the ancient Greeks to predict the movement of the stars and planets with stunning accuracy.

It was so advanced, it took another 1,500 years for an astrological clock of similar sophistication to be made in Europe.

In 2020, new X-ray images of one of the mechanism’s rings, known as the calendar ring, revealed fresh details of regularly spaced holes that sit beneath the ring.

Since the ring was broken and incomplete, however, it wasn’t clear how just how many holes were there originally.

Initial analysis by Antikythera researcher Chris Budiselic and colleagues suggested it was likely somewhere between 347 and 367.

Now, in a new paper published in the Horological Journal, researchers from Glasgow University have found it was likely to have had 354 holes, corresponding to the lunar calendar, rather than 365 holes, which would have followed the Egyptian calendar.

Professor Graham Woan, from the university’s School of Physics and Astronomy, used a technique called Bayesian analysis, which uses probability to quantify uncertainty based on incomplete data, to calculate the likely number of holes in the strange mechanism.

Dr Joseph Bayley, from Glasgow University’s Institute for Gravitational Research, then adapted techniques his team were using to measure tiny ripples in spacetime to scrutinise the ring.

Their findings confirmed it most likely contained 354 or 355 holes which were ‘precisely positioned with extraordinary accuracy’.

As well as the academic fervour around the mechanism, the device was the inspiration for the Archimedes Dial in blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, starring Harrison Ford and Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

This fictionalised version of the Antikythera mechanism predicts the location of naturally occurring fissures in time, allowing the travelers to travel back in time.

Such is its level of sophistication that alien enthusiasts have even made wild suggestions that it could be evidence of extraterrestrial beings passing on knowledge to ancient human civilisations.

Professor Woan said: ‘We hope that our findings about the Antikythera mechanism, although less supernaturally spectacular than those made by Indiana Jones, will help deepen our understanding of how this remarkable device was made and used by the Greeks.’

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